Auditing Hreflang Annotations: The Most Common Issues & How To Avoid Them

This is because it can be less straightforward and more complex to verify the correct usage of hreflang annotations by going through all of the XML files. SEO crawlers (that can crawl a list of XML sitemaps directly) as well as the “International Targeting” report of Google Webmaster Tools can help with this task. I recommend paying extra attention when auditing the usage of hreflang annotations in XML sitemaps.